


War Goats

by sunryder



Series: Fluff Bingo [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, war rams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: Bilbo had assumed some sort of Dwarrow magic turned regular lambs into war rams since nowhere were there war ewes amongst the livestock Dis herded across Middle-earth. However, all of Bilbo’s questions coupled with his prior knowledge on the subject were not enough to help him understand why, of all people, he had a baby war goat trailing him around Erebor like a puppy.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: Fluff Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1723501
Comments: 56
Kudos: 663
Collections: Astral_Phoenix108's Library, Stories to Read on Bad Days





	War Goats

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it hasn't been an *entire* year since I've posted something, so I'm calling it good. I haven’t written a Hobbit fic in a while, and yet, the names of all these stupid Dwarves came back to me easier than my own relatives. I choose not to think too hard about that. 
> 
> Done for the Fluff Bingo prompt 'baby goats.'

Bilbo had assumed some sort of Dwarrow magic turned regular lambs into war rams since nowhere were there war ewes amongst the livestock Dis herded across Middle-earth.

Bilbo’s Dwarrows didn’t have much actual knowledge on the husbandry of war animals, so they responded to his questions with stories about how war rams were particular to the children of Durin east of the Misty Mountains, while war goats belonged to the Blue Mountains in the west. According to legend and Ori, their cousins far to the east had war hogs and war boars. That seemed redundant to Bilbo since even Shire hogs were second only to chickens when ranking animal meanness. Dwalin said with surety that their cousins to the north had domesticated wargs, which Bilbo was inclined to believe because that sounded precisely like the kind of stupidity a Dwarf would try and somehow manage to succeed.

Bifur turned out to be the one who knew anything about the practice of war-creature husbandry, despite being a miner who had no call to know such things. That was usually the way with Bifur, just like it was his way to explain in Khuzdul that war rams mated with regular ewes and there were no problems with either copulation or birth, despite the size difference.

Actually, Bifur said the war rams preferred having sweet, soft sheep beneath them, and they had their favorites that they’d work in again and again, stretching to fit just right until the sheep wouldn’t be satisfied by any but their ram. Given that Bifur didn’t smack Bofur for the smirking translation and Bombur blushed the entire way through, Bilbo assumed it was accurate.

(Despite all Dwarrow assumptions to the contrary, Bilbo was quite aware that Bifur wasn’t actually talking about _sheep_. However, Bilbo was perfectly content to continue playing dumb until such time as Thorin got past his guilt and said something himself. Dis and Balin checked the worst of the company’s antics, so at least Bilbo and Thorin hadn’t yet been locked in a cupboard.)

However, all of Bilbo’s questions coupled with his prior knowledge on the subject were not enough to help him understand why, of all people, he had a baby war goat trailing him around Erebor like a puppy.

Though to be honest, a puppy would have been less trouble. Puppies did not find themselves bleating for help from atop a bookshelf. Puppies didn’t find themselves climbing bookshelves at all. Puppies weren’t a special breed born with blunt horn buds they liked to butt into Bilbo’s calves to herd him around the kingdom. Puppies didn’t regard Bilbo’s papers as their favorite food group while the waste from Bilbo’s garden was regarded the same way Dwarves did salad. Puppies didn’t keep coming back for nibbles because apparently the only creatures in Middle-earth who could out-snack Hobbits were goats.

Further, puppies didn’t travel about with leaps too awkward to properly be called bounding. (Bilbo had consulted a dictionary and determined that baby goats ‘lolloped’. He said it with such certainty that the Dwarrow just nodded and inserted the description into their collective vocabulary.) In particular, Bilbo’s daft little goat thought that movement forwards and backwards was for other creatures and thus lolloped to the left and right instead. (It didn’t matter where Bilbo stood in relation to Daft, he managed to leap in precisely the direction that would leave bruises on Bilbo’s shins.)

While kids and puppies were equitably fluffy, puppies could be picked up and carried over the rail-less walkways that Dwarves found not at all terrifying. Daft’s size and compromised sense of direction meant Bilbo took the long way around instead. (Bilbo could admit that was a mark in the plus column, but only to himself.)

Daft was the runt of his litter, which meant little for puppies but for a war ram meant he would never be able to carry a dwarf of Thorin’s size, or even Ori’s should he be in full armor. The Dwarrow in charge of livestock had been quick to reassure that Daft would be the perfect size for Bilbo and his mithril, which Bilbo had politely _not_ informed the Dwarf was nonsense of the highest caliber. Bilbo could barely manage a pony let alone the lolloping, climbing, reckless, piercing mess that Daft would be when his horns finally came in.

Bilbo was quite aware that Daft would look even more ridiculous when he was grown. He didn’t need a ridiculous rider added to that.

(The little thing was black with a white stripe around his middle and large, black spots. Added to that were horns that – thanks to another quirk – were starting to corkscrew like a ribbon instead of curl like the rams or grow properly wide to be both handle and spear like on the other goats.

To be frank, Daft looked like a very small, very stupid… cow.)

Because Daft wasn’t quite odd enough with his size, color, corkscrews, herding, and stupidity, where other goats were quite well known for playing dead when they were startled, Daft stayed upright and just kept sniffing. Apparently Daft was the lone exception in a whole species that preferred to roll on their backs with stiff legs in the air. (Once, Kili jumped from behind a sofa and shouted at Daft only to have the goat lollop forward and sniff his pockets for biscuits. Fili laughed so hard he got the hiccups.)

Well, all right, when taken together like that Bilbo could understand why Daft would choose to follow him around out of everybody. However, Bilbo never intended to say that out loud. Not only because he did not want to consider himself the stunted, strange version of a Dwarf, but also, his plan was to _not_ pressure Thorin into anything and Daft made subtlety rather hard. Especially since any time Daft wasn’t with Bilbo, he was with Thorin.

Since the creature was an abomination sent by the Valar to test Bilbo worse than a dragon, Daft never climbed impossible rock faces or nearly lolloped to his doom for Thorin. No, the infernal creature perched atop the king’s desk eating whatever paperwork Thorin wanted to pretend he hadn’t seen. (Apparently it was now one of Erebor’s greatest insults to have Thorin look a noble in the eye while he fed their complaints to a stunted baby goat. Since Bilbo thought that a rather excellent use of Daft’s time, he wasn’t too upset about Thorin undoing all his efforts to teach Daft that paper was not for eating.)

Worse, Bilbo didn’t know what sort of extrasensory perception told a goat when he was feeling particularly melancholic about the likelihood of Thorin ever forgiving himself enough to be ready for romance, but Daft always knew and would immediately butt Bilbo to wherever Thorin was. How Daft knew Thorin was in parts of Erebor that Bilbo had never seen or heard tell of was one of the least strange and most convenient things about his goat, so Bilbo didn’t press too hard.

Adorably, when the king was having a particularly stressful day, Daft would curl up on his lap like the puppy he absolutely was not for cuddles and pets that he absolutely _did not_ deserve.

The Dwarves wrote off these things as Daft channeling Bilbo’s own mother henning and not as a goat attempting to matchmake for his Hobbit. (Honestly, how any Dwarf who wasn’t Dis managed to convince themselves they had sense, Bilbo didn’t know.)

However, there was one thing that would give Bilbo away: Dog.

Thorin’s war ram had been named by a young Frerin who, according to Thorin, hadn’t yet grasped that an animal could be large, hairy, and _not_ a dog. (The name had led to no small amount of confusion when Fili and Kili were learning their animals.)

When they were properly tended to, war rams could live as long as the Dwarrow who rode them. The first official act of Dog, a ram of distinguished lineage and bred for a king, had been to protect the refugee caravan as he carried young, exhausted Dwarrow across the breadth of Middle-earth. Most of Dog’s life had been spent on patrol around Ered Luin and dragging his horns through dirt to plow trenches for planting.

Dog was massive, with bone-white horns and fur so black he was almost blue. Like his Dwarf, Dog was beginning to get some silver in his fur, though not in the ram equivalent of temples around his horns, but instead speckled through his coat so when the light caught him at night he looked like a blanket of stars. Dwarf and ram both looked like the heroes from legend that they rightly were, while Bilbo and Daft couldn’t walk across Erebor’s bridges for fear they’d fall.

Bilbo might have been a bit melancholy about the difference in status if it were twenty years ago, or if the Dwarves didn’t call him Bilbo Dragonthief when they thought he wasn’t listening, or if Thorin was sure enough of himself that Bilbo had the luxury of doubt. But it was now, they did, and one of them had to be the emotionally mature one and never in the history of Middle-earth had that been a Dwarf.

So no, it wasn’t Bilbo’s own patient longing that was going to give him away, and it wasn’t Daft flopping atop Dog’s fluffy back for naps every afternoon. It was going to be how Dog hooked the curve of a horn around Bilbo’s waist and dragged him into what could only be called a cuddle pile. (They were killing horns that had been used for the humblest of service, and now that they had a chance to rest in their noble sphere, they were being used to shelter Bilbo. One shouldn’t blush at being dragged about by a ram too large to fit through Bag End’s door, but for all Thorin’s hesitance, Dog made his Dwarf’s feelings clear.)

Midafternoon naps in a bundle of hay, fur, and Daft’s misplaced horn buds was not precisely how Bilbo intended to spend his time in Erebor, but every time he opened his eyes to find Thorin in the stable, standing one step closer to their cuddle pile with a look of longing, Bilbo knew it wouldn’t be too long before he had what he’d stayed in Erebor to get.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: “But Sunryder, ‘dog’ in Khuzdul is ‘kunb,’ so wouldn’t the war ram’s name be Kunb instead of Dog?” 
> 
> It would if Dwalin wasn’t an asshole. When tiny, thrilled Frerin told him about Dog’s name, Dwalin immediately started calling him Dog in Common instead of Khuzdul. The name was so ridiculous and Dwalin thought Thorin was such a sucker for allowing it that he didn’t want Thorin to ever be able to pretend that his war ram’s name was anything other than Dog.


End file.
